Page 273 - The Toyota Way Fieldbook

Chapter 11. Develop Exceptional Team Associates 249

TIP
Take Personal Responsibility for Training and
Development
With all the talk these days about “people being the most important
asset,” it would seem that training would assume greater impor-
tance for managers and leaders. Many managers pass the responsi-
bility to someone else and then hope for the best. It is important to
take personal responsibility for establishing a training method and
ensuring a successful outcome. Make a plan, train the trainers
(yourself included), follow up personally to assure the method is
sound, and verify process results. Your personal attention to this
process will show people that their success is important to you.

correctly? How do you know that they will explain it clearly? Do they
really know all the quality and safety aspects of the job?
The Toyota method for training is tried and true, and they have used it for
over 50 years. It has served them well, and the basic concept is as relevant today
as when it was first used in the United States during World War II. After World
War II, Toyota, along with many other Japanese companies, received assistance
from the United States. The Training Within Industry Service (TWI), a branch of
1
the War Manpower Commission, supplied some of the material. It was origi-
nally used to support the production of munitions and other goods during the
war. At that time, many of the skilled workers were on active duty, and it was
necessary to develop an effective training procedure to quickly and efficiently
train unskilled people to perform the work. The TWI material included sections
on Job Relations, Job Methods (which may have been the foundation for stan-
dardized work and the elimination of waste), and Job Instruction Training,
which Toyota adopted as their primary training protocol.
The training method used by Toyota today is essentially a replica of the
material developed in the United States in the 1940s. Toyota has made only a
few minor additions, and today uses the material to effectively train thousands
of workers who produce the highest quality vehicles in the world. This simple
method is very powerful, yet for some reason, after the war many companies in
the United States chose to forego this method, perhaps because the material was
developed to train the “unskilled” workers who were taking the job of men going
to war. After the return from war of “skilled” workers, it was not necessary to
have such a basic training method. Toyota never viewed the method in this way,
seeing it as an essential tool to use in the development of exceptional associates.

Training Within Industry Service; Bureau of Training, War Manpower Commission, Washington,
1
D.C., 1944.